1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet type printing apparatus which is supplied with ink from a replaceable ink cartridge, and ejects ink droplets from nozzle openings onto a recording medium for achieving the printing. The present invention also relates to an ink cartridge and an ink refilling device suited for use with the printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
A conventional ink-jet printing apparatus includes, for example, a print head, and an ink cartridge for supplying ink to the print head. In the print head, a drive signal is applied to a piezoelectric vibrator or heating device in accordance with print data, and the ink within a pressure-generating chamber is activated by the energy, generated by the piezoelectric vibrator or the heating device, thereby ejecting ink droplets from nozzle openings.
The print quality is determined by the resolution of the print head, and besides is much influenced by the viscosity of ink and the degree of spreading (running) of ink on the recording medium. Therefore, in order to improve the print quality, the characteristics of the ink, as well as the drive signal to be applied to the print head, have been improved, and besides in order to prevent the clogging of the nozzle openings, maintenance conditions, such as the period of blank ejection and the ejection in a capped condition, have been improved.
Thus, when the characteristics of the ink and the print head-driving method are both suitably determined, the quality of the printing by the printing apparatus is improved. Such technical developments may be achieved by designing new ink-jet printing apparatus to be manufactured, but for applying such achievements to printing apparatus already off the manufacturer, the printing apparatus must be brought to the manufacturer, and then memory device, storing control data, must be improved also. This is hardly possible practically, however, in view of the cost and the intricate process during manufacturing required.
Therefore, it has been proposed a method as disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 5-193127, in which an ink cartridge is provided with a memory device, and characteristics of ink, the amount of the ink, drive conditions and so on are stored in the memory device, whereas in a printing apparatus, the drive conditions are adjusted in accordance with this information.
Incidentally, in view of the preservation of the environment, the manufacturers have now been required to recover as much as possible ink cartridges and cartridges with a print head, which have heretofore been discarded as consumable goods, and therefore a study has been made of refilling the recycled ink cartridges so that they can be recycled.
However, the ink cartridges, brought into users"" possession, are used in various manners, and therefore the recycled ink cartridges are varied greatly in quality, and the regenerating processing can not be effected uniformly for such recycled products in contrast with the case of producing virgin products.
The invention has been made in view of the problems and difficulties accompanying the conventional art, and an object of the invention is to provide an ink cartridge which, when recycled, can be reused while maintaining a high quality.
Another object of the invention is to provide a printing apparatus suitable for such ink cartridge.
A further object of the invention is to provide a cartridge reproducing device suited for the above ink cartridge.
The above and other objects can be achieved by a provision of an ink cartridge which, according to the present invention, includes a container having an ink chamber for containing ink, and an ink supply port for ejecting the ink from the ink chamber to a print head; memory device for storing data related to the ink; and contact device enabling the transmission of data between the memory device and an external device, wherein the memory device has an area in which data, related to a history of use of the ink cartridge, can be stored in a rewritable manner.
The conditions of use of the ink cartridge by the user are stored in the memory device, and therefore at the time of reproducing the ink cartridge, the reproduction processing, suited for the ink cartridge, can be effected in accordance with the data in the memory device.